Le chantier des gosses Jean Harlez

Come for the fantastic acting and improvisation performances of the kids and neighbours, stay for the universal bittersweet clash between childish play and adult development.

And for the aftertalk about the city as a building playground, with speakers from Toestand, Dear Pigs, Dallas Collectif, Meow, and Filtercafé.

18:30 doors
19:00 screening
20:30 aftertalk: the city as a building playground
21:30 end aftertalk
22:30 bar closes

+ 14:00 onwards Under the Pavement, the Beach >>

+ 16:30 kids workshops The city as a building playground >>

screening

A time machine to Brussels in 1954. A declaration of love to the Marolles. A bizarre battle between neighbourhood children and the property developers who are taking over their playground – a vacant lot in the shadow of the Palace of Justice.

This wonderful film by the 100-year-old (!) Brussels autodidact Jean Harlez lay gathering dust for sixty years, until it was restored by Cinéma Nova in 2014. Today, finally/once again on the big screen, Le chantier des gosses is a gentle and powerful document of life in the city, and how much (or how little?) it has changed in 70 years.

aftertalk

About: The place of children in the city.
With*: Niels Coppens (Toestand), Jan Laute or Martha Meijer (Dear Pigs), Omar Kashmiry and Maarten Weyns (Meow), Filtercafé, Dallas Collectif.
Moderated by: Quinten Wyns (film programmer, Beursschouwburg)

*speakers tbc

about

Jean Harlez (Belgium, 1924) has been described by some as “the savage of Belgian cinema”. This son of a blacksmith is an autodidact in the margins of professional circles. He entered the film world in 1947 as an assistant to Charles Dekeukeleire and worked for many years as a cameraman for Marcel Broodthaers. After a period of unemployment, Harlez built his own 35mm camera and, without any financial support, made a short film about an agricultural cooperative. A hit, because the Ministry of Agriculture bought the film. The money he received enabled him to make his big dream come true: “to shoot a real feature film”. Le chantier des gosses is the result of this adventure. The press reacted enthusiastically to this debut film in a new genre: “the first Belgian neo-realist full-length film!” Jean Harlez is a versatile artist: short films, films of his voyages of discovery to Greenland, and in recent years he has mainly made life-size collages (“assemblages”).
avilafilm.be/
dumontharlez.be/